One of the best parts of writing a blog is finding like-minded colleagues on the other side of clicking “publish”. This year, I was delighted that some readers reached out with an email or phone call. Some wanted to dig into or question a blog topic. Others just wanted to share that it was good to know they weren’t the only one wrestling with these issues. Each exchange left me feeling a little more connected. Thanks to everyone who took the time to make that connection.
I’m also grateful to all of you who made time to read, like, follow, comment, share, or forward the blogs to others. You helped provide the fuel to keep up with this labor of love!
Top Volunteer Commons Posts for 2022
It’s a fascinating exercise each year to see which blogs resonated with readers. Here’s the lineup of the most-read Volunteer Commons posts in 2022:
- Power, Privilege, and Volunteerism continued to be the most-read Volunteer Commons blog post. It pointed out the ways that volunteerism can perpetuate negative patterns of power in community and called on each of us to unravel and reverse these patterns.
- I Love Tracking My Volunteer Hours! – No Volunteer Ever suggested volunteer impact ideas for nonprofits and funders that aren’t “soul sucking.”
- When and Where to Use Wage Replacement Rates (or Not) for Volunteer Value offered an updated primer on using the value of a volunteer hour (usually the one assigned by Independent Sector) in thoughtful ways. It outlined the benefits and limitations of assigning a dollar amount to service.
- A Contrian’s Guide to Volunteer Value (Or an Ode to Volunteer Worth) threw out volunteer numbers and explored what really matters in volunteerism.
- Reckoning with the Shadow Side of Volunteerism tapped adaptive leadership strategies to address problematic aspects of volunteer engagement.
- Abandoning Niceness in Volunteer Engagement suggested that niceness is an obstacle to effective volunteer engagement. It recommended right relationship as a stronger guiding principle.
- Does Volunteerism Have a Low Value Proposition? provided insights on how the subjective perceptions that we have about volunteers can outweigh all the so-called objective data about how great they are.
- Volunteering as Democracy. It was a sign of the times that readers found this short blurb from October 2020 asking if the volunteering in our agencies offered access to all of those in the community.
To finding and deepening connections in 2023!
Thanks for posting these – I know I missed some of these so will be good to ‘catch up’ before diving into 2023.
Thanks for reading, Gretchen! (And I welcome any feedback or thoughts you have about them.)